Roberto Calasso: Ka

No one was more uncertain about his own identity than Prajāpati. He who gave names to others found his own name undermined by the interrogative and indefinite: Ka. Anirukta, aparimita, atirikta : “inexpressible,” “boundless,” “overflowing”: that was what they called him. Even those who knew him best never saw his extremities, which ever receded — and were finally lost in infinity. Perhaps that was another reason why none of his children thought of making a portrait of their Father. When they celebrated or invoked him, the only sound was an indistinct murmuring. Otherwise they worshiped him in silence. They said the silence belonged to Prajāpati.

Prajāpati was mind as power to transform. And to transform itself. Nothing else can so precisely be described as overflowing, boundless, inexpressible. Everything that exists had been in Prajāpati first. Everything remained attached to him. But it was an attachment that might well go unnoticed. Where was it? In the mind, buried in our being like a splinter no one can dislodge.

Although Prajāpati liked to tell himself that the gods had deserted him at once, without any consideration for their Father, there had been a moment when some of them asked him the question he least wanted to hear: “When you created us, why did you create Death immediately afterward?” On that occasion Prajāpati answered by going straight into detail and avoiding the crux of the question: “Compose the meters and wrap yourselves in them. That way you’ll be rid of the evil of Death.” Then he explained how the best meter for the Vasus was the gāyatrī and the best for the Rudras the triṣṭubh . These gods immediately composed the appropriate meters and wrapped themselves in them. Then the Adityas started up with the jagatī meter. By now they were all busy earnestly talking about problems of meter. As if the whole world were a question of alternating meters. The meters were like sumptuous garments. By wearing them, placing one over another, the shape of the body was hidden. Thus they believed they could hide their bodies from Death. Suddenly, they had the intoxicating sensation that they were sufficient unto themselves. Even their harrowed, mysterious Father ceased to be of interest. They didn’t remember that Prajāpati hadn’t answered their question, “Why?” And in the end even Prajāpati himself felt that he had answered the question — that he had offered the most effective help. But they deserted him all the same. Mean-while Death could still see their bodies, as though they were immersed in transparent liquid.

Prajāpati’s children thought about the Father. They hadn’t wanted to know him. Now they felt his absence. His legacy to them was everything there was, but a fragmented, elusive everything. Only Death, who was part of that legacy, was everywhere. He dwelled in every moment of the year, a flood that swept over them. They tried rites, they tried the agnihotra , they tried sacrifices to the new moon and the full moon, offerings to the seasons, animal sacrifices, soma . They measured their gestures, their words. But to no end. Then they remembered how Prajāpati, the death rattle in his throat, had called upon Agni, the firstborn. The two had whispered a few words to each other, but no one had heard. Thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and taking Agni as a go-between, they went down to talk to Prajāpati.

Unrecognizable now, overgrown with vegetation, the Father said: “You do not know how to recompose me in all my forms. You go to excess or you fall short. As a result you will never be immortal.” He fell silent, while the gods were overcome by despair. Then Prajāpati spoke again, with the calm, sober voice of a learned master builder. “Take three hundred and sixty border stones and ten thousand, eight hundred bricks, as many as there are hours in a year. Each brick shall have a name. Place them in five layers. Add more bricks to a total of eleven thousand, five hundred and fifty-six…” That day Prajāpati announced how the altar of fire was to be built.

Prajāpati’s children, gods first, then men, realized that day that, in order to live, one must first of all recompose the Father and recompose oneself, rebuild one’s own body and one’s own mind piece by piece. For if Prajāpati had been scattered and spread across the entire world, how could they — the dust of his bones — claim not to be scattered and spread? Only by patiently sewing, weaving, and tying things together could they expect to acquire a mind — hence a power of attention, rather than a blind vortex — and a body, rather than just limbs bereft of their lymph. This preparatory task would be the task . It would take time, it would take all time. Every one of the three hundred and sixty days of the year. Every one of the ten thousand, eight hundred hours of the year (if by “hour” we mean a muhūrta , which lasts forty-eight minutes). And then? Preparing life took up every hour life offered. When the time was up, the task began again. An empty clearing, a stick scratching marks in the earth.

This was what they must do: build a huge bird — a bird of prey: an eagle, a hawk — of bricks. How else could they conquer the sky? And here a false etymology, ever friend to thought, came to their aid. Brick , they said: citi . Bricks in layers. But what is citi? It’s cit , which means “to think intensely.” Every brick, baked and squared, was a thought. Its consistence was the consistency of their attention. Every thought had the outline of a brick. It wouldn’t disappear, wouldn’t let itself be swallowed up in the mind’s vortex. Rather it became something you could lean on. Something you could place a next thought on — and slowly, crisscrossed with joints, a wall was raised. That was the mind, that was the body: the one and the other rebuilt, with wings out-spread.

This is what they thought:

“True, we live in a blurred and disjointed state. True, what happens inside these boxes of bone that are our heads leaves no trace on the hard, rough material in which we move. And it’s also true that unreality cloaks both ourselves and the things we touch, as if this were the normal state of being. But when we wander about this torpid plain, we do find, here and there, certain places that vibrate like nerves, certain sounds that peal with clarity, almost as though they meant something, and sometimes an emotion will flood through us, as though we had recognized something. Why so? We live in the broken body of Prajāpati, but we will always be tiny ourselves: only an immensely long voyage, if ever we could undertake such a thing, would allow us to glimpse the white cliff that is the further shore of a broken joint. If life is thus, must we then resign ourselves to this opacity, pierced through though it may sometimes be by the pinpoints of these vain reminders? We were warriors once, violent warriors. But no conquest ever helped us rend that blur. So one day we decided to concentrate all our fury in just one patient, grueling task. As long as time itself. Building the altar of fire.

“To arrange ten thousand, eight hundred bricks, one must start from the edge, from the frame of everything: of the world, of meanings. Start from the place where naturally we are. And the beginning will have something incongruous and obsessive about it: a few stones placed beside an empty clearing. But once formed, a frame evokes a center. And that was the fire of our minds: invisible right to the last step. It had to lie at the center of time, of the endless hours that surrounded it; at the center of the intense thought that made the bricks, that was those bricks laid one upon another. When they reached that point, touched that center, it would, as through a bundle of nerves, affect everything, as far as the furthest of the bricks, as far as the tip of the eagle’s wing, as far as the most distant of days. That is what is meant by the altar of fire. But did this come to pass? We shall never be able to say. Why not? When we arrived at that point, time had run out, the year was gone. We would have to begin again, on another clearing, with other sticks, other bricks.